Favorite Sports and Other Hobbies- Observational Drawings

Third trimester 6th graders just completed their observational drawings of sports equipment and other hobby items including ice skates, lacrosse sticks, squash rackets, bathing suit and goggles, a seashell collection and more! After creating an accurate line drawing of their still life object(s), we turned out the lights to create shadows and highlights on the objects and used various drawing pencils in order to create a range of values on the drawings...














Here are the completed artworks:









Look at how far they've come! These are some of their pre-instruction drawings of the equipment- what a difference!:

2nd Semester's Sweet Still Life

American painter Wayne Thiebaud is best known for his paintings of cakes, pies and other commonplace objects arranged as they might be seen in a bakery or cafeteria. Thiebaud uses thick brushstrokes to suggest the swirling textures of cake frosting and he often outlined his objects with lines of contrasting color; a technique which intensifies color, creating a vibrating "halo" effect. Thiebaud considered composition and point of view to be very important and he liked the simple geometric shapes of pies and cakes; he set them in precise arrangements in blank, open space. In this project, eighth graders were challenged to take familiar sweet treats and put them together in a visually pleasing composition. Inspired by Thiebaud, students emphasized the arrangement of objects, texture of paint, neutral or constrasting negative space, contrasting areas of light and shadow and the use of cast shadow to create mood and depth in their work. The results are simply sweet!

Lower Schoolers make prints too!

LS Art Clubbers completed their third project last Thursday. They spent some time developing Springtime drawings that include all kinds of insects, flowers, leaves and plants before transferring their designs to a foam printing plate with a ball point pen. Students then used colored inks and papers to create a series of three prints which are on display next to the dance studio in the MS- come check them out in person!

You Cubes!

Fourth quarter fifth grade girls recently completed their first printmaking project- a You Cube (get it?! like You Tube???)! First I took a picture of the girls that I cropped and reduced to black and white contrast only:

The girls transferred the black parts of their photos to a 6" square of EZ-Carve, a rubber-like material, and used a gouge to carve out the areas of positive space. They then used different colored inks and papers, including their handmade marbled and dyed papers to create a series of six prints for their cube:

They embellished several of their prints with personal poetry and mixed media too before we attached them all to a 6" foam board cube... look how fun they are!:

Macro Photography in Digi Photo Class

Macro photography is the art of taking close-up pictures that reveal details which can’t be seen with the naked eye. For example, while we can see the fly on the wall, our eyes aren’t equipped to make out the fine details of the hairs on it’s face. This is where macro photography comes in. It gives us a glimpse into the world of the very small, which goes largely unnoticed by us as we hurriedly shuffle through our day. 7th Grade Digital Photography students used the Macro setting on their cameras today to take some close-up photos of the spring blooms and foliage around campus. Next week, we'll be manipulating these photos in Photoshop (multiplying, rotating them, etc.) to create abstract kaleidoscope-type compositions.

Here are some pics of the kids taking their photos this morning and few of the shots they got, although we'll encourage them to get even closer next time: